NEWS ANALYSIS : Loss of Aide ‘Enormous Blow to Arafat’

The assassination of Abu Iyad, the second most important figure in the Palestine Liberation Organization, deprives PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat of a key aide and ally at what is perhaps the most critical moment in the guerrilla organization’s turbulent 30-year history.

Abu Iyad and two other PLO officials, including the PLO’s security chief, Abu Loul, were shot to death in Tunis late Monday night by another Palestinian, who was said by PLO sources to have links to renegade guerrilla leader Abu Nidal.

A PLO communique released hours after the incident identified the assassin as Hamza abu Zid, a member of the radical Abu Nidal group who defected to the PLO 15 months ago.

While some Palestinians were quick to accuse Israel of the killings, the PLO communique’s description of Abu Zid as “a planted agent, who undertook dealings with traitorous parties,” suggested that PLO officials are now blaming Abu Nidal, whose blood feud with Arafat intensified two years ago when the PLO leader renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Officials in the Tunisian capital, site of the PLO’s political headquarters, said Abu Zid was captured after a seven-hour siege at a seaside villa in Carthage, where he cut down the three PLO officials with a burst of machine gun fire and then took Abu Loul’s wife and daughter hostage. The two women were later released unharmed, but there were conflicting reports about whether Abu Zid surrendered or was overpowered after the villa was surrounded by hundreds of PLO guerrillas.

Arafat, who reportedly was flying from Amman to Baghdad when the killings occurred, had no immediate comment. But PLO sources conceded that the loss of two of his most trusted lieutenants was likely to be a severe blow to Arafat as he attempts to steer the PLO through what most analysts agree is its darkest hour.

With the PLO already having paid an enormous diplomatic and political price for siding with Iraq in the Persian Gulf crisis, “there is no question that, on the eve of a war in which the Palestinians will also suffer, the loss of these core leaders is an enormous blow to Arafat,” added Tahseen Basheer, a retired Egyptian diplomat who now analyzes political trends in the region.

Abu Iyad, whose real name was Salah Khalaf but who, like many Palestinian guerrillas, was better known by his nom de guerre, supervised the PLO’s intelligence network and, while he held no formal position in the leadership, he was widely regarded as second only to Arafat in influence and stature.

One of the founders of Fatah, the main guerrilla group within the PLO, he was said by Israeli and Western intelligence services to have been the mastermind behind Black September, the terrorist organization that killed a dozen Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

However, he evolved into one of the PLO’s more pragmatic and moderate leaders in his later years, advocating recognition of Israel’s right to exist and settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute through a “two-state” solution. Ironically, he ranked high on two “hit lists”--Israel’s for his suspected role in masterminding the Munich massacre and Abu Nidal’s for advocating a negotiated settlement of the Middle East conflict.

Abu Loul, whose real name was Hayel Abdel-Hamid, was in charge of PLO security, a position he inherited after the assassination of another key PLO leader, Khalil Wazir, by Israeli agents in 1988. The third official killed Monday was Abu Mohammed Omari.

“With these deaths, much of the core of the PLO’s original leadership has now been liquidated,” Basheer said. “Arafat must be feeling very lonely tonight.”